Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1144

Top: Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
Up: Requests For Comments

Search: |  | Search Depth: |
Search Type: | String RegEx | Search Options: | NoCase WholeWord

Network Working Group
Request for Comments: 1144

V. Jacobson/1/
LBL
February 1990

### Compressing TCP/IP Headers

for Low-Speed Serial Links

### Status of this Memo

This RFC is a proposed elective protocol for the Internet community and requests discussion and suggestions for improvement. It describes a method for compressing the headers of TCP/IP datagrams to improve performance over low speed serial links. The motivation, implementation and performance of the method are described. C code for a sample implementation is given for reference. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

### Contents

1 Introduction
2 The problem
3 The compression algorithm

3.1 The basic idea
3.2 The ugly details

3.2.1 Overview
3.2.2 Compressed packet format
3.2.3 Compressor processing
3.2.4 Decompressor processing

4 Error handling

4.1 Error detection
4.2 Error recovery

5 Configurable parameters and tuning

5.1 Compression configuration
5.2 Choosing a maximum transmission unit
5.3 Interaction with data compression

6 Performance measurements
7 Acknowlegements

References

A Sample Implementation

A.1 Definitions and State Data
A.2 Compression
A.3 Decompression
A.4 Initialization
A.5 Berkeley Unix dependencies

B Compatibility with past mistakes

B.1 Living without a framing `type' byte
B.2 Backwards compatible SLIP servers

C More aggressive compression
D Security Considerations
E Author's address

List of footnotes

Original PostScript document
Original text document

1. | This work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract Number DE-AC03-76SF00098.

Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1144